Maternity Grants

The government wants to increase the size of the maternity grants - being a recent father, I can only confirm the saying that ' a child costs a house' - hence, the maternity grants do not cover much of the real costs of having children - while there is some research that shows this kind of monetary transfers do help to increase fertility, I wonder whether this is a wise policy. First, one can argue that this premium will also be paid to families that would have had children anyway. Second, and many might find this argument politically incorrect, one can argue that those families who are 'at the margin' and thus decide to have a child because of this premium are really the families a government would want to target for having more children.